Euthanasia advocate shares dying patient’s final moments

A Melbourne doctor has described his final moments with a patient who died after taking a life-ending drug.

"I was with him at the end and sat with his friends as he slipped away," Dr Rodney Syme told nine.com.au after his patient and long-term cancer sufferer Bernard Erica, 71, took Nembutal in December last year.

"He required no assistance from anybody. It was his choice and he was in control and he got to decide for himself how it would end.

"He went to sleep in two of three minutes and died in under 15 minutes."

Dr Syme with patient Bernard Erica who ended his life in December 2016. (ABC - Australian Story) ()

The 81-year-old has long walked the line between ethics and legality, but said he wanted to share Mr Erica's final moments.

"Bernard had suffered a long time and I need to dispel the myth that what happened in that room was a criminal offence. Bernard choosing to die was not a tragedy, the tragedy would have been if he had been forced to do it alone," he said.

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"It is not a criminal offence to say goodbye to someone. You have to do something physically or show that you persuaded someone to end their life for it to be a crime. That certainly wasn’t the case."

Dr Syme faced the Medical Board of Australia in March last year when news of his decision to give Mr Erica access to Nembutal became public.

The Melbourne urologist was deemed "a danger to his patients" and ordered not to provide Mr Eric with Nembutal – a drug he had already administered to almost 200 patients in the past.

A stranger who heard about Dr Syme's ethical plight offered to give the 71-years-old patient Mr Erica some of their own Nembutal.

However, if faced with the dilemma Dr Syme said he would not have "abandoned (Mr Erica) at the end" at the risk of his career and possible jail time.

"I have thought about this quite often and I think if the help hadn't come from anywhere else I would have provided it to Bernard. I had a commitment to him and I couldn’t turn my back."

In November last year the Melbourne doctor used the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to challenge the Medical Board of Australia's damning classification and won after proving he did not provide Nembutal with the intention of ending Mr Erica's life.

"If a person has the drug and has the control that can be enough for them and it was certainly the case for Bernard. After he was given the Nembutal he was a different person. He looked happier and appeared to have more energy because he knew the choice was his."

Dr Syme said he has and will continue to dispense Nembutal following Mr Erica's death and the VCAT ruling deeming him not a danger to the public or his patients.

A 2015 Vote Compass survey on moral issues surrounding euthanasia asked 70,000 Queensland residents what they thought about assisted suicide and a patient's right to die.

In 2014 71 percent of Victorian coalition voters and 79 percent of ALP voters supported a terminally ill patient's right to die.

However, the assisted suicide debate has remained a contentious issue in Australia with Christian lobby groups and organisations like HOPE staunchly opposed to it ever becoming legal.